23 Nov 2009

Hey family It has been a good week,

Heres what happened
At the beginning of this week we had a wonderful thing happen, we committed our investigator to be baptized. He accepted and now has a date for second of January! It was a really great lesson. The topic was receiving blessings from sacrifice. He is a really great young man and will make a great priest. We are also teaching his family, which consists of his Father and younger brother. They are a really great family So our meeting with him went over really well, when we committed him to baptism he was a little nervous but looked at us and said that he trusts us and will try hard to be prepared for the date. He reached his hand across the table and shook saying you have my word I set that as a date and do what I can to make it. It was a really cool experience.


Later in the week I went on exchanges with Elder Hill. It was awesome what happened with Elder Pearson because he was on exchanges with Elder Vivona, they went tracting on that first night they got let into a panelak and then into someone’s home and taught a lesson and the individual became a new investigator. The Cool thing is that this lady has a family that can also be introduced to the gospel! Elder Pearson was on cloud nine. Then the following day when the two were together again for district finding, they found and taught another new investigator! It was awesome! They were so happy.

On Saturday we baked up some banana bread and went out and paid a few visits to some of the Less-Actives in the city. It was a wonderful opportunity to serve these wonderful people. Best of all was that the two less actives that we visited and challenged to come to church actually came!! It was super.
As a district we put a big focus on finding and were able to find 9 new investigators as a district!!! It was a solid finding week but wasn’t solid with people at church. So we are going to continue building our areas and then push to get the new investigators coming to church! On sunday we went out to an investigators house that lives about 30 min away. Her name is Adela, and she restores old dilapidated books. We had a good meeting out at her house. She lives way out in the country but she is a great lady and repaired my scriptures for me because the pages came unsewn so she resewed them back in for me.
Take care this week and do something fun together while you are still empty nesters!!!--



With love,

Your son,Starsi Morgan Nowland

16 Nov 2009

Hey family!!!
You all sent such great letters this week. Thank you for that Here is what went down

I will not lie about the fact that we have been struggling with trying to find new investigators. We have had righteous desires and righteous actions towards trying to accomplish our goals, but we just haven’t been able to make the solid connection. I have been praying every night for increased faith with which the Lord might be able to work miracles. We have really been striving to talk with all of our progressing investigators about baptism inviting them to work with us toward a date of baptism. It was hard as we were striving to endure with patience the trials that the adversary kept placing in our path. Well, I am here to tell you that the Lord never loses! Out of nowhere an older investigator, that had been out of the country for a while sent us a text asking to meet. We meet with him and quickly found out that he had been humbled and had lost all motivation to strive for his life’s goals. He came to us looking for answers, so we told him that he needs to repent. It was so cool just like the apostles of old we said to him,” this is what repentance is and how we do it, you need to repent, and then you will find the joy that you once had swell back into your body. It was very powerful! We set up a meeting for two days later and taught him the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We went through all the five steps that lead to eternal life, and then told him, “you are here right now at the step of repentance, we are going to help you to repent so that you can take the next step which is baptism by immersion and authority.” He accepted the challenge and is now working towards the 12th of December!

The Lord’s work will always go forward...”no unhallowed hand will stop this work from progressing.” Of that i am sure. We simply have to choose if we will be the ones to bring the work to light now in this time while we are here, or if we will grow lazy and leave it off for the next worthy soul. No matter what though this work will go forward.

Being a missionary is many things, it is hard, it is trying, and it is a learning process, but it is also rewarding, amazing, full of miracles, and up to this point it really has been the best two years (well year and some odd months). I am blessed to be here.

A little insight:
The main thing that i have really come to recognize is that with whatever we are doing, we need to always look for the fun in it. Everybody really only wants to be happy. It is what motivates each one of us to do what we do, to make the choices that we make. Too many people get lost in the things that bring very short temporary happiness, and ignore that thoughts that there could be something better; thats when people give up hope; that is what brings tears to my eyes...people without hope. So always look for the path that will bring greater happiness than you currently have. Always be open to inspiration.

Questions:
Have you had lots of snow? not at all yet
Take lots of pictures and especially of your new apartment ok? ill do my best
Are you close to a czech crystal store? (is that what it is called - the little glass sparkly beads for making necklaces) They are everywhere, i can go looking in one, i have never really been inside one yet. What can i get for you?
Enjoy this week family. Mam vas rad. I love you.
Remember be happy!--
With love,
Your son,Starsi Morgan Nowland

9 Nov 2009

Hey family, Ahoj Rodino!

So we had finding on the plan. We were feeling the burn of the previous days of finding. We had spent dedicated time out on the street looking for people that “had ears to hear” the message. We hadn’t seen very much success. It was hard, to continue talking to these people as our faith was taking hit after hit of, “No Time” “give me peace!”, and, “I’m hurrying.” We took some time to sit down and really talk about what was going on. We each shared our feelings. I then offered a true prayer for us where I truly begged the Lord to show us success, to lead us. We went out after that and talked with energy and fire, the denials and shut-downs didn’t stop coming, but we continued in the face of it. Then, finally, we stopped a young man and asked him to sit down with us for a few minutes. We had a great conversation with him. His isn’t a believer and isn’t terribly interested in the gospel and has his own beliefs, but he was willing to meet again two days later on Saturday. He showed up and we had a good talk with him about the gospel and its effect in our lives. We told him about the Book of Mormon and the history and knowledge that it holds, because he is really interested in the history of religions. It was a great blessing form the Lord to see him answer our prayers. We got a few numbers from some really great people and ended up meeting with two other individuals that will make great new investigators as soon as we can get them to find an opening in their schedules to meet with us again. I really saw an answer to our prayers. Answers come in all sizes and altitudes of amazingness, but they come.
The biggest struggle that the district is having right now is that we don’t have enough people that we can be teaching so we are going to put a bigger push on finding these next few weeks.
Successes are that we have been doing an extra contact game that involves a punishment of having to wear the same tie the next day if you don’t get all ten extra contacts. It has really helped us to contact couples and larger groups of people. If you come home with only 6 extra contacts then the next day you have to wear the same tie, and you have to get the 4 that you missed from the day before and then your 10 for that day.

We are getting there. Keep praying for us.

Stepanka Anderlova and Honza Barta were at church this Sunday. It was Wonderful!
Question time: How long will it take a package to get to you? im not sure maybe three weeks
Do you get to travel to Prague or is it too far away? It is about three hours by train, so not too often.
Take care this week! i love you so much!
Thank you for the letters, they are very motivating. you are the greatest!-- With love,
Your son, Starsi Morgan Nowland

2 Nov 2009

Hey family!
This week was a busy one, We moved out of our apartment temporarily. We are getting new windows put in so we had to make ourselves scarce. We are now bunking in with the other elders for at least a week! its exciting! We had Zone Conference as well which was welcomed and needed.

So I think the highlight of this week that you should know about is the experience that I shared in Zone Conference. So on Tuesday we had 6 lessons in the plan, three of which we had set up with members ready to come and assist us. We had a challenge given to us by our Zone leaders to teach 6 member lessons. We didn’t exactly hit that goal this week but…! We did hit the standards in member lessons which was so awesome! It is possible to hit standards in member lessons in every single city in this mission. We just have to be willing to put the work into finding solid investigators and then setting them all up for a time that our member can make. It takes a lot of work on our part as missionaries, but it is do-able! Anyways so on Tuesday as all of our lessons started falling through, I started to feel the pressure that would be put on us in the latter part of the week. Elder Pearson and I felt at the end of the day that we really needed to repent of the way that we handled the let down of all of our investigators falling out. This is the amazing part, so on Thursday we really pushed hard to have two meetings at least with members present. It was turning out to be hard as we had one investigator that said that he couldn’t meet as early as we had set up. The only time he could meet was at the exact same time as another meeting that was in another location of the city. We set it up anyways and I was just hoping and praying that we would be able to find two members to go with us. I texted our branch president, President Chrdle, and asked if he would be willing to go on real “Splits” with us. He very simple responded “ok.” You couldn’t imagine how happy I was. The only trick left was to find one other member that would be able to go with us. So I gave Brother Harf a call. He gladly accepted. Again my joy was full as I see our goals and dreams for this city become a reality. We ended the night with a prayer in our branch president’s basement. WE had two wonderful member lessons and another two set up for Saturday that went through without a hitch.

The Lord might work in mysterious ways, but he is always working and bringing to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.

Questions:Do you have Halloween in Czech? The members really are the only ones who will celebrate, and it is mostly just an activity night where the kids dress up but they dont go trick or treating.

Well i dont have anything else to say but, i love you and im excited that member lessons are starting to go here little by little.

Thank you so much for helping me with college stuff. Say hi to the band peoples for me, Say hi to rachel, blaine, erin, kailey, barrett, and evan for me if you see them. Oh and could you let me know when christopher is supposed to be getting home?
I love you soooooo much, Opravdu, ja nikdy nelham, ja vas mam fakt rad. Vy jste nejlepsi rodina na svete.--

With love, Your son,
Starsi Morgan Nowland